In a bid to return the retailer back to profitability, JC Penney announced that it will cut as many as 2,000 jobs and close 33 under performing stores.

JC Penney reportedly suffered a 25 percent drop in sales in 2012, during the reign of ex-CEO Ron Johnson. Johnson tried to unsuccessfully steer the mid-market department store into an upmarket direction.

The planned cuts, which would begin as early as May, could save the company an estimated $65 million:

Stores closing include five in Wisconsin, where archrival Kohl's Corp is
dominant, three in Pennsylvania, and two in Florida. No stores in
Penney's home state of Texas are slated to close.

The struggling
department store chain had 116,000 employees as of Feb. 2, 2013. That
was about 40,000 fewer than a year earlier as the company tried to cope
with lower sales.

This is sad to me. I have nothing snarky or funny to say about this whatsoever. JC Penney was a great store and it's really not pleasant to see them fall apart like this. Two-thousand people are going to lose their jobs, possibly as soon as May. Two. Thousand.